Even though I created a list of (and use) YouTube replacements in my personal life, I haven’t fully been able to shake it for work purposes. People just don’t browse apps like Vimeo in the same way, and I gotta market my business. So I’ve started planning some more short videos to publish there. 

I went through the YouTube channel settings with a fine-tooth comb and turned off AI features, as I didn’t want the app “improving” my videos with AI. But then I made the mistake of trying out an app called VidIQ. 

I learned about VidIQ while watching some YouTube content creation tutorials. After checking out the limited free version, I decided to pay for one month to see if it would give me any insights that I could use to make my channel better.

Well, it certainly offered up suggestions - including auto-generating YouTube video graphics using my face. The reason? My existing thumbnails feature “expressions that aren’t natural.” Oh, and this is?

My real photo, taken by a photographer in my town, is on the left. The AI slop version of me is on the right and looks like this at full size:

It’s mostly lifted my actual image and applied it here but the face is…off. It isn’t my face. I don’t smile with my mouth closed. You either get teeth or nothin'.

I went ahead and allowed VidIQ to generate a few more-Pandora’s box was already open here-so that I could see higher resolution versions. (For science.) 

These are not my eyes.

Who is this broad?? It created this “highly optimized thumbnail” using my appearance in a recent video. Here’s a still of what I actually looked like in the video: 

This is actually me.Are my YouTube thumbnail graphics-the ones I make myself-award winning? No. But my titles and video descriptions are pretty good. And when you arrive on my YouTube page for the first time, you’re met with the video that I’ve screenshotted above playing for you. 

I’d rather see a real person’s animated face than that…dead eyed grim looking broad up there. 

But this ultimately brings me to another point: we’ve reached a place in our tech-society where you can innocently sign up for an app that you heard will help you with a project and suddenly find yourself looking a weird version of “you” in the eye. One that’s got freakishly smooth skin, a weird eye shape, and seems way grouchier than you actually are at the moment. 

In another one of my “ugh I hate it but for the plot” image tests, VidIQ completely erased my tattoos. All of them. No, no I don’t meet the traditional professional standard in the way I look. But that doesn’t matter. I’m self employed. If someone doesn’t want to watch my videos because I have tattoos, well, fine. I don’t care. 

Another image gave me very curly hair. I do have increasingly wavy hair as I get older, but even with a full bottle of strong hold mousse I’m not going to get this level of curl:

It also replaced my glasses with a different color in some, because, well, why not? Consistency is for the birds!

And finally, in one of my personal favorites, it creates an image that sticks my real headshot in a fake google result next to a website that’s not my name:

I’ve canceled my VidIQ account and left a note telling the company exactly why. This level of AI without request is not okay. It makes me nearly as grouchy looking as fake me does in some of these pictures, so, I guess we match now…a little.